Lean Six Sigma for Good Podcast

In this podcast, I talk to my friend, Joy Mason, CEO and founder of Optimist Business Solutions, and the founder of The Six Sigma Racial Equity Institute™ (SSREI), which is an innovative leadership program designed to upskill Black Women to be complex problem solvers. We discuss her background in continuous improvement, why she started Optimist

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In this podcast, I extract the audio from a published video by IISE that recapped our last volunteer service project in Seattle in May 2022. We have been conducting these volunteer events prior to each annual conference since 2012, and this was the first one we’ve had since the pandemic. You can read about prior

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In this podcast, I interviewed Jenelle Zito, who is the Director Of Continuous Improvement at Racine Unified School District (RUSD). Prior to joining RUSD about 5 years ago, she implemented process improvement at Gateway Technical College as a Quality Champion, after earning her Lean Six Sigma Green and Black Belt certification. She shares examples of

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In this podcast, I interviewed Jorge Perez, who is the President & CEO of YMCA of Greater Cincinnati. Early in his career, he helped students into college and keep them from getting into drugs, gangs and dropping out of school. He realized that getting to the root cause of the issue (not having a support

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In today’s episode, I share a presentation from the IISE Seattle conference on May 23, 2022. Joshua Fowler from Romac Industries starts off the presentation by giving some background on the project that I was involved with as the lean consultant, and Michael Johnson from Lean Environment Inc. discusses the technical solutions applied to reduce

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In today’s episode, I interviewed Elisabeth Swan, who has over 30 years of process improvement experience with a great background working for consulting firms like Rath & Strong and Pivotal Resources. She has lots of experience working with nonprofits, government, hospitality, healthcare, entertainment (including work on “Saved by the Bell”), and the for-profit sector. She

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In today’s episode, I interviewed Tracy O’Rourke, who has over 20 years of process improvement experience, working with nonprofits, government, education, military and the for-profit sector. She teaches Lean and Six Sigma at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD), is the co-host of the podcast and video series, Just-in-Time Cafe (with Elisabeth Swan), and is

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In today’s episode, I share the interview I had with D.J. Vagnetti, host of the Environmentally Conscious Nation podcast. I don’t think his podcast is still active, otherwise I would recommend listening directly to the episode. This interview assumes that the audience doesn’t know much about process improvement or Lean or Six Sigma, so if

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Today I recapped the last year, and give some insights into my plans for 2022. It’s a shorter episode than usual, so hopefully you have time to listen to it during the holidays.

I recap the past podcast episodes that I released, along with ones I was interviewed on. I also discuss the LeanSixSigmaForGood.com and LeanSixSigmaEnvironment.org website updates, discuss nonprofit volunteer work with Lean Portland, my client work related to environmental reductions and work with nonprofits and not-for-profits, and updates on the book series.

Here are the links I mentioned:

* Lean Six Sigma for Good: Lessons from the Gemba (Volume 2)* Lean Portland Virtual Unconference – Dec 2021* Video of focused nonprofit volunteer projects with Lean Portland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J45ZqxCHEvA* Free PDF download – “Leading Improvements for Social Good,” How Kaizen Event Facilitation Skills can increase your impact in the community and increase opportunities at work: https://www.leansixsigmaforgood.com/facilitation/ * Lean Six Sigma and the Environment course (Free): https://business-performance-improvement.thinkific.com/courses/lean-six-sigma-and-the-environment* Past podcasts of Lean Six Sigma for Good: https://leansixsigmaenvironment.org/index.php/category/podcast/

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* FREE online course called “Lean Six Sigma and the Environment”* OpEx Six Sigma Online Training and Certification* Creative Safety Supply – Free 5S Guide

Our guest is Hugh Alley, an experienced lean practitioner and industrial engineer, who has experience with the Toyota Kata method of improvement. He has recently applied this approach to a nonprofit food bank in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada called Loaves and Fishes. This approach was based on the KataLab approach developed for the food bank Moisson Montréal by Jean-Marc Legentil, Marc-Olivier Legentil and Sylvain Landry.

He shares the following information during our interview:

* His background in Industrial Engineering and how he self-taught when he didn’t know how to solve a problem* The four steps of the Toyota Kata approach* Why it should be called Toyota Kata, not just Kata* How to rethink failure as an outcome that wasn’t expected* The confusion about Toyota Kata on how to identify the next experiment* The format for a 2-day KataLab implementation at a food bank:* Day 1 AM – Intro to Toyota Kata training (with puzzle exercise)* Day 1 PM – Discover current condition over a few rounds of exploration* Day 2 AM – 3 rounds of experiments to improve, run process for 30 mins, analyze and reflection time, then setup next experiment* Day 2 PM – Coaching Kata process learning and practice* How they were able to double the output of food produced at the food bank with half the people and half the space* How they were able to use KataLab to reduce lab waiting time by 50% in 13 weeks without spending money or adding people* The 5 core skills that every supervisor and frontline leader should have

If you enjoy this podcast, please follow us on your favorite podcast app. Any ratings you could give us, or shares across social media would be greatly appreciated!

You can watch the full video of the interview here…

Links

* Email: [email protected]* LinkedIn Profile – Hugh Alley* Books Mentioned:* Hugh’s book, Becoming The Supervisor (Productivity Press, June 2020), a story focused on developing the core skills of front line leaders* 5 skills are Instruct, Improve, Set priorities, Foster performance, and Listen* Tiny Habits: https://amzn.to/3CDjxgU* Reinventing the Factory: Productivity Breakthroughs In Manufacturing Today: https://amzn.to/3pYgU5K* The Machine That Changed The World: https://amzn.to/3mCT25K* A Revolution in Manufacturing: The SMED System by Shigeo Shingo: https://amzn.